217 



in reasoning, or, as it is commonly called, deductive reasoning, the result is not merely 

 an erroneous opinion, but au absurdity, or nonsense. As the passage is one of extreme 

 interest, and containing a truth of great importance, I quote it at length : 



" When a maa reckons witliout the use of words, which may be done in particular 

 things, as when upon the sight of any one thing we conjecture what was likely to have 

 passed, or is likely to follow upon it, if that which he thought likely to follow follows 

 not, or that which he thought likely to have passed hath not passed, this is called 

 ' error,' to which even the most prudent men are subject, but when we reason in words 

 of general signification and fall upon a general inftrence which is false, though it be 

 commonly called ' error,' it is indeed an ' absurdity,' or senseless speech ; for error is but 

 a deception in presuming that something is passed or to come ; of which, though it were 

 not passed, or not to come, yet there was uo impossibility discoverable. But when we 

 make a general assertion, unless it be a true one, the possibility of it is inconceivable, 

 and words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound are tliose we call ' absurd,' ' in- 

 significant,' and 'nonsense' {Leviathan, p. 2S). In other words, to talk illogically is to 

 talk nonsense. And, as very fewot us are logic^al, and none of us always so — like Molieres 

 hero, who was unconscious that he talked prose— we talk nonsense all our lives without 

 knowing it. Socrates discovered tbis more than two thousand years ago, and the great 

 need of the age is to rediscover it." 



(i) Bentham was never tired of reproaching the lawyers with their use of legal fictions 

 or ol repeating that a flctiou is not an argument, and the charge is repeated ad nauseam 

 by his followers ; and one of them. Sir Henry Maine, has even based a theory upon it. 

 But it may be said that the legal fiction of the lawyers is always recognized as such, and 

 never used as an argument, but merely as a convenient form of expression, or as a con- 

 venient means of reconciling a true doctrine with some arbitrary rule that caunot be 

 disavowed, and that its use is governed by the maxim : In flctione juris semper xquitas ex- 

 islit; while the fictions of philosophers, such, for instance, as the social contract, though 

 known by them to be false, are stated and argued from as though in fact true, and with- 

 out any regard to the extravagance of the conclusions they may lead to. 



0) On this point Hobbes, and the modern English jurists, — who are at one with him — 

 occupy precisely the position of the ancient cosmologists, who explained the stability of 

 the world by supposing it to rest ultimately on a turtle, but did not explain upon what 

 the turtle rested. In the same way these jurists regard private rights as resting upon the 

 will of the State, but in denying the existence of natural right they render it impossible 

 to conceive of any foundation upon which the right of the State can be rested. 



{k) It u ill be observed here that while the argument of Kant rests mainly upon the fic- 

 tion of the personality of the State, and of its supposed will representing "the united 

 will of the people," it involves also other fallacies incidentally referred to to eke outthe 

 reasoning. 



The first consists of the ambiguous proposition that it is only by submission to the leg- 

 islative will that a condition of law and order is possible ; which may mean either a gen- 

 eral submission or an absolute submission without exception. The former proposition is 

 altogether true, and it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the duty of the citizen 

 to obey the government ; but the latter is not only false, but is inconsistent with the very 

 existence of social order, the true foundation of which is, the consciousness of inviola- 

 ble rights in the subject, and the manly determination in the last resort to vindicate 

 them by force even against the government. The ideal State is not composed of slaves 

 to human power, but, in the noble language of Sir William Jones, of men "who their 

 duties know, .... but know their rights, .... and knowing, dare maintain them." 



The other fallacy consists in the argument, that the power of the State would not be 

 supreme if it might be resisted, and consequently, " to limit its supreme power is a con- 

 tradiction." But obviously the term "supreme power" is merely comparative, and 

 denotes nothing more than the highest political power in the State, which, if we use the 

 term " power" in the sense of right, is necessarily limited by right, and if we use it in 

 the sense of actual power, may be, and in fact is, limited in various ways. 



